Susan Sharon

Deputy News Director

Susan is the deputy news director who handles assignments and planning by the news staff. She’s also a general assignment reporter who began her career at Maine Public Radio working at the State House in 1992, and still loves the work, which takes her to the Maine State Prison for a story on solitary confinement one day and to the foothills of western Maine to look for wood thrush the next.

Susan is a graduate of the University of Montana, where she got her first job in public radio news while still a student. She has also worked at television stations in Montana and Maine. You can occasionally hear her stories on NPR.

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LEWISTON, Maine - Six months after the creation of the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, a new nonprofit group has been formed to preserve and protect it.

The Friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters is a private group with a 13-member board of directors. Secretary Cathy Johnson says the initial goal is to attract more members of the public to volunteer in the monument and work on educational programs about it.

As President Donald Trump prepares to rewrite his controversial travel ban, a coalition of 500 business leaders and mayors is calling for meaningful immigration reform.

The group, New American Economy, has released an interactive map with state and congressional district-specific data about the economic contributions of immigrants. Supporters are hoping that it will bolster the argument for expanding immigrant worker visas.

A continuing surge in the sale of bottled water has the company looking for two new sources of spring water and making plans for a fourth bottling facility somewhere in western Maine or northeast of Bangor.

Eighteen workers at Woodland Pulp Mill’s bleach plant in Baileyville were taken to Calais Regional Hospital Thursday morning after being exposed to chlorine oxide gas during a planned maintenance outage.

Chlorine oxide is a potent chemical used in water treatment and bleaching. Woodland Pulp spokesman Scott Beal says the chemical was accidentally released and quickly contained. Workers, he says, were taken to the hospital out of an abundance of caution and kept for observation.

A spokesman for the Maine Border Patrol says geography, along with several feet of snow, may be one reason that Maine is not seeing illegal border crossings the way other border states like North Dakota and Minnesota have.

In recent days stories about asylum seekers trying to flee the United States to get a chance at asylum in Canada have made headlines. Border patrol agents say the numbers have increased along parts of the international boundary in the wake of the president’s travel ban from seven Muslim-majority nations.

A two-year investigation of the Lewiston School Department by Disability Rights Maine, Pine Tree Legal Assistance and the ACLU of Maine has uncovered what the groups say are violations of federal civil rights and disabilities laws.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins' staff is hearing from another group of protesters, who converged outside her office in Portland Thursday morning chanting, "Block that pick! Block that pick! Block that pick!".

This time the several dozen protesters are urging her to reject the nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Bob Klotz of South Portland is with 350 Maine, one of several groups represented at the rally.